Research

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Our Research

The School of Computing and Mathematics within the Faculty of Business, Justice and Behavioural Sciences at Charles Sturt University is home to about 31 academic researchers as well as over 60 research higher degree students, working in the ICT and Mathematics disciplines. Our research focuses applied research in computing science, ICT security and applied mathematics and statistics which benefit the communities in our region. Our research staff have obtained nationally competitive grants from such as Australian Research Council (ARC) as well as industry and government agencies. And they published their research findings actively in leading national and international journal (most of our publications are searchable from CSU Research Output (CRO). Our research themes are highlighted through the Four Faculty Strategic Research Areas (SRA) within the Faculty.

Three research areas are based in the broad disciplinary area of Computing and Information Technology. These are:

Members of SCM have successfully secured CSU's official partnership in EU COST Action CA16101 - "MULTI-modal Imaging of FOREnsic SciEnce Evidence (MULTI-FORESEE)- tools for Forensic Science". CSU's role is to host EU researchers on their Short Term Scientific Missions, contribute to international training, and supporting networking events. CSU is the only organisation of COST International Partner Countries (i.e. non-COST States). More details can be found at http://www.cost.eu/COST_Actions/ca/CA16101?parties. Project duration: 02/03/2017 - 01/03/2021.

National Competitive Research Projects in the Last 5 Years

Description:This project is to develop Online Learning algorithms to unlock the potential of such overwhelming data, which can lift existing applications to a new level. Reducing 1% of the total fraud loss of $3.5 trillion by research, is 35 billion dollars return. The advances in fraud detection also make Australia a safer nation which attracts more overseas investments. Advancing social networks by research will secure Australia's future share of the social networks market that has massive potential.

Description:The Twin Measures Framework is a novel platform for analysing existing dimensionality reduction methods and the invention of new ones. This research will radically improve image analysis, with beneficial applications from pharmaceutical drug design through to border protection.

Investigating which strategies are most effective in overcoming the ethical problems facing information and communications technology professionals

Description: This project will investigate what sorts of ethical problems information and communications technology (ICT) professionals commonly face at work and which strategies are most effective in solving them. An output of this project will be an interactive multimedia-rich website that will enable ICT professionals to deliberate on an ethical problem and come up with the best option for solving it.

Description: This project merges cutting-edge digital games technology with applied drama techniques to produce a crisis management game to simulate conflict and crisis scenarios. Working closely with the Australian Defence Force to better understand organisational communication under extreme pressure, this new approach will build teamwork and break down barriers to effective crisis management.

Description: Scenario planning is the process of identifying plausible futures and their inherent risks. The organisation, the network within which it is embedded and the environment, in which the network operates, form a complex system of non-linear, dynamic interrelationships. This project will develop a continuous process of scenario planning, capturing learning about the future as it emerges. The project fuses the use of agents for intelligent data collection and negotiation with agent-based modelling to build powerful network-based scenario modelling systems for commercial applications. This outcome will place Australia on the frontier of smart information use. partner organisations: NCR Australia Pty Lrd and IMIA Centre for Strategic Business Studies Pty Ltd.

Government and Industrial Research Projects in the Last 5 Years

Description: This research will address issues with the constraint of surgical openings where surgeons cannot see beyond the exposed surfaces and these limitations are accentuated by the even greater restrictions of minimally invasive surgery. Limited visibility through "keyholes" during endoscopic procedures and through small incisions with ever-diminishing sizes increases the need for intra-operative image guidance. the project aims to develop a system of augmented reality enhanced image guided surgical surgery, in which the images from cameras are aligned with patient's physical position at the time of surgery. Such a "see-thorugh" capability makes surgeries safer and more accurate. two objectives will be achieved: (1) Theoretical research on image registration based on wavelet networks. (2) Development of an augmented reality enhanced image-guided surgery with see-through capability.

An evaluation of nurse practitioners – aged care models of care program in Australia

Description: The purpose of the Nurse Practitioner Aged Care Models Program is to develop effective, viable and sustainable models of service, grow Nurse Practitioner numbers, and improve access to primary aged care service. Among the aims to the national evaluation of this Program is to assess the impact of new models in relation to cost-effectiveness, quality of care and health outcomes.

Selected Other Research Projects in the Last 5 Years

Project Name

Funding Source

Investigators

The threats from Data Mining on the privacy of a Facebook User

Description: In this project we discover various possible ways to breach the privacy of an individual Facebook user by a malicious data miner using sophisticated data mining algorithms. The main goal of the project is to find out the threats on privacy and increase public awareness. We also argue that it is a responsibility of the data miners to provide a technical solution to the problem. We also propose data mining solutions in order to protect the individual privacy of a Facebook user from the threats of a malicious data miner.

Description: Generalised Linear Models (GLMs) provide an extension of the traditional regression and Analysis of Variance models based on the Normal distribution to other distributions. Designing efficient experiments for these traditional models is comparatively straightforward because the optimal design does not depend upon the values of the unknown parameters of the linear model. However, in GLMs, the optimal design does depend upon the unknown parameters, which makes the problem of finding efficient designs more difficult.

"Image Texture Segmentation Based on Wigner Distribution in a Fractional Fourier Domain

Description: To apply the proposed WD-FrFT to image texture segmentation. Since coarseness and directionality are two essential perceptual cues used by the human visual system for discriminating different textures, we will adopt two corresponding types of features, spatial - frequency and orientation, which will be extracted by L1 difference of Gaussian (DOG) filters and L2 wedge filters, respectively.

Description: The evolution of a number of systems proceeds by steps and can be naturally described by difference equations. A special role in this class belongs to integrable equations. Using tools like algebraic entropy and symmetry analysis our aim is to better understand the behaviour of such systems and to develop efficient ways to solve them.

Description: The project verifies the accuracy of the two-dimensional adaptive mesh refinement for more than one refinements for quadrilateral meshes by comparing with existing benchmark results. Wide applications in practice will be followed after the successful accuracy verification of the adaptive mesh refinement method.

Description: Near infrared (NIR) spectral analysis is a rapid, non-destructive assessment tool widely used to predict or describe quality parameters of material under investigation. Important areas where this is applied include agriculture, food quality control, geography and geology, medical diagnostics, remote sending, oil, petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries. The statistical techniques of partial least squares or modified partial least squares are currently used in the calibration-prediction process, which relates the NIR spectra to the quality parameter/s. The calibration process involves using a representative sample from the population under consideration, recording the NIR spectra and analysing the sample using usual reference methods, finally the calibration is used to define the relationship between these two measurements. The current NIR spectral analysis procedures represent a 'black box', little understood by most practitioners, and the output is not easy to interpret. This research project investigates the statistics underlying the present procedures in NIR analysis. then we will seek more robust and transparent statistical procedures to replace or strengthen the current statistical practices.

Ms Sharon Nielsen

Small area estimation of housing stress in Australia

Description: Housing stress describes a financial situation of households where the cost of housing - either as rent, or as a mortgage repayment - is considered to be significantly high relative to household income. It is also used to describe inadequate housing for a proportion of the population. About 1.7 million people in Australia have housing stress. Rises in housing prices and rents have generated keen interest in understanding who is struggling to afford to buy or rent a house, and what features exist at small area levels. Housing stress statistics vary with demographic and socioeconomic conditions of households and with geography. Due to the unavailability of micro-population survey data in Australia, small area estimates for housing stress are not readily obtainable. Policy makers need accurate housing stress estimates at local levels to make effective policy decisions on this and related issues such as poverty, social disadvantage, health and various social assistance programs. This research project is concerned with providing these necessary small area housing stress estimates, using micro-simulation modelling technology to simulate the characteristics of populations at the small area level.

Improving student performance and engagement in mathematics and statistics through video-based resources

Description: Different video-based resources for mathematics and statistics have been developed. This project looks at how effective they are through student surveys, usage data and correlation to marks. In particular, we are interested in how the effect varies across the different mode of study (internal, hybrid and distance).

Our Research Environment

The academic and research staff within the School enjoy several dedicated lab facilities established under the Research Block Grants, formerly Research Infrastructure Block Grants (RIBG).

High Performance Computing Facilities

Research computer system maintained by Spatial Data Analysis Network (SPAN) at Charles Sturt University. The system is configured as 4 x 12 core Intel Xeon E7-8857v2 3GHz processors, 1024Gb RAM, 45 Terabytes of disk storage, and installed licensed software such as Mathworks MatLab, which is critical to the research staff and students in the School.